Hotel Chelsea

The Hotel Chelsea (also the Chelsea Hotel or the Chelsea) is a hotel in Manhattan, New York City, built between 1883 and 1885. The 250-unit hotel is located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, in the neighborhood of Chelsea.

It has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists and actors. Though the Chelsea no longer accepts new long-term residents, the building is still home to many who lived there before the change in policy. Arthur C. Clarke wrote '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' while staying at the Chelsea,"Famous residents of the Chelsea Hotel"
''The Telegraph'' (London), August 2, 2011 and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and artistic exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas was staying in room 205 when he became ill and died several days later, in a local hospital, of pneumonia on November 9, 1953, and where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978. Arthur Miller wrote a short piece, "The Chelsea Affect", describing life at the Chelsea Hotel in the early 1960s.

The building has been a designated New York City landmark since 1966, and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977. an
''Accompanying three photos, exterior, from 1977''

History

Built between 1883 and 1885 and opened for initial occupation in 1884,, p. 70, p. 181 the twelve-story red-brick building that is now the Hotel Chelsea was one of the city's first private apartment cooperatives.Regier, Hilda. "Chelsea Hotel" in , p.210 It was designed by Philip Hubert p. 151 of the firm of Hubert, Pirrson & Company in a style that has been described variously as Queen Anne Revival and Victorian Gothic. Among its distinctive features are the delicate, flower-ornamented iron balconies on its facade, which were constructed by J.B. and J.M. Cornell and its grand staircase, which extends upward twelve floors. Generally, this staircase is only accessible to registered guests, although the hotel does offer monthly tours to others. At the time of its construction, the building was the tallest in New York.

Hubert and Pirsson had created a "Hubert Home Club" in 1880 for "The Rembrandt," a six-story building on West 57th Street intended as housing for artists. This early cooperative building had rental units to help defray costs, and also provided servants as part of the building staff. The success of this model led to other "Hubert Home Clubs," and the Chelsea was one of them. Initially successful, its surrounding neighborhood constituted the center of New York's theater district., p.153 However, within a few years the combination of economic stresses, the suspicions of New York's middle class about apartment living, the opening up of Upper Manhattan and the plentiful supply of houses there, and the relocation of the city's theater district bankrupted the Chelsea.

The building reopened as a hotel in 1905, which was later managed by Knott Hotels and resident manager A. R. Walty. After the hotel went bankrupt, it was purchased in 1939 by Joseph Gross, Julius Krauss, and David Bard, and these partners managed the hotel together until the early 1970s. Stanley Bard, David Bard's son, became manager after Gross and Krauss' deaths.

On June 18, 2007, the hotel's board of directors ousted Bard as the hotel's manager. Dr. Marlene Krauss, the daughter of Julius Krauss, and David Elder, the grandson of Joseph Gross and the son of playwright and screenwriter Lonne Elder III, replaced Stanley Bard with the management company BD Hotels NY; that firm has since been terminated as well.

The hotel was sold to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit for $80 million in 2011 and stopped taking reservations for new guests, to begin renovations. Long-time residents were allowed to remain in the building, some of them protected by state rent regulations. The renovations prompted complaints to the city by the remaining tenants of health hazards caused by the construction. The city's Building Department investigated these complaints and found no major violations. In November 2011, the management ordered all of the hotel's many artworks taken off the walls, supposedly for their protection and cataloging, a move which some tenants interpreted as a step towards forcing them out as well. In 2013, Ed Scheetz became the Chelsea Hotel's new owner after buying back five properties from Chetrit and David Bistricer. In 2016, Ira Drukier, Richard Born and Sean MacPherson bought the Chelsea Hotel.

Located in the Chelsea since 1930 is the restaurant El Quijote which was owned by the same family until 2017 when it was sold to the new owner of the hotel. In late March 2018 the eatery also closed for renovations.

In February 2022 Hotel Chelsea and El Quijote quietly reopened.

Notable residents

Literary artists

During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many famous writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke,"10 great places to get on the road and feel the Beat"
''USA Today'', March 10, 2006. Accessed December 16, 2007. "On the West Side, Kerouac and then-wife Joan Haverty lived at 454 W. 20th St., where he began writing her a long letter about his recent travels while she waited tables to support them: The letter became ''On the Road'', "the bible of the Beat generation." He wrote the book itself at the Hotel Chelsea, later the last home of Herbert Huncke." This account of ''On the Road'' is disputed by Jeff Wallenfeldt in an article for ''Encyclopædia Britannica''
"11 or 12 Things Remembered Well About the Chelsea Hotel"
Dylan Thomas, Arthur C. Clarke, Sam Shepard, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe,"Legends of Hotel Chelsea chronicled in new book that covers what inspired Andy Warhol, relegated Sid Vicious to 'junkies' floor' before he killed Nancy"
review by Sherryl Connelly of ''Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel'', ''New York Daily News'', November 16, 2013 Valerie Solanas, William S. Burroughs,"The 10 best Chelsea hotel moments"
by Hermione Hoby, ''The Guardian'', December 19, 2010 Allen Ginsberg, Quentin Crisp, Gregory Corso, Arnold Weinstein, Catherine Leroy, and James Schuyler.

Delmore Schwartz, author of " In Dreams Begin Responsibilities", spent the last few years of his life in seclusion at the Hotel Chelsea.

Charles R. Jackson, author of '' The Lost Weekend'', died by suicide in his room on September 21, 1968. Joseph O'Neill and his wife moved there in 1998, and they raised three sons there; the Chelsea Hotel plays a significant role in his novel '' Netherland''.

Actors and film directors

The hotel has been a home to actors, film directors, and comedians such as Ethan Hawke, and Edie Sedgwick.

The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, who temporarily resided in the hotel, portrayed the artist and long-term resident of the hotel Ching Ho Cheng for his film ''Tally Brown, New York''.

Musicians

Much of the Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided there. Some of the most prominent names include Chet Baker, Grateful Dead, Nico, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Virgil Thomson, Jeff Beck, Bob Dylan, Chick Corea, Alexander Frey, Dee Dee Ramone, Alice Cooper, Édith Piaf, Johnny Thunders, Mink DeVille, Alejandro Escovedo, Marianne Faithfull, Cher, John Cale, Joni Mitchell, Robbie Robertson, Bette Midler, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, J.D. Stooks, Jacques Labouchere, Sid Vicious, Richard Barone, Lance Loud and Rufus Wainwright.

Madonna lived at the Chelsea in the early 1980s, returning in 1992 to shoot photographs for her book, '' Sex'', in room 822. Leonard Cohen, who lived in room 424, and Janis Joplin, in room 411, had an affair there in 1968, and Cohen later wrote two songs about it, "Chelsea Hotel" and "Chelsea Hotel #2"."How Leonard Cohen Met Janis Joplin: Inside Legendary Chelsea Hotel Encounter"
by Jordan Runtagh, ''Rolling Stone'', November 14, 2016 Jobriath spent his last years in the pyramid-topped apartment on the Chelsea's rooftop where he died of complications due to AIDS in August 1983. The Kills wrote much of their album '' No Wow'' at the Chelsea presumably between the years 2003 to 2005. Jorma Kaukonen wrote the song "Third Week in the Chelsea" for Jefferson Airplane's 1971 album ''Bark'' after spending three weeks living in the Chelsea.

Visual artists

The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Frank Bowling, Doris Chase, Bernard Childs, Claudio Edinger, Brett Whiteley, Ching Ho Cheng, Larry Rivers and from 1961 to 1970 several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein (who wrote his ''Manifeste de l'hôtel Chelsea'' there in April 1961), Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet (who left a version of his '' Déjeuner sur l'herbe'' from 1964 in the hotel lobby featuring other pieces by Larry Rivers or Arman), Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Joe Andoe, David Remfry, Diego Rivera, Ryah Ludins, Robert Crumb, Ellen Cantor, Jasper Johns, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg, Herbert Gentry, Willem de Kooning, Stella Waitzkin, Robert Mapplethorpe (room 1017, with Patti Smith). The Australian Vali Myers moved into the hotel in 1971 and remained there for 43 years.

The painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases